


strays on a stale sea

by gendernoncompliant



Category: Haven (TV)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Conflict Resolution, Drinking, Getting Together, Introspection, Miscommunication, Multi, Pining, Polyamory, Prompt Fill, disaster bisexuals, i just want good things for duke crocker, implied alcoholism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-06
Updated: 2020-05-06
Packaged: 2021-03-01 16:35:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,148
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23990176
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gendernoncompliant/pseuds/gendernoncompliant
Summary: He toasts the sky, shaking his head. “That’s what you get for listening to a dead man,” he announces to no one. To the stars, maybe, since they’re the place destinies are supposed to be written in.Whoever wrote his destiny must have been drunk, too.
Relationships: Duke Crocker/Audrey Parker/Nathan Wuornos
Comments: 20
Kudos: 74





	strays on a stale sea

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Parker_Haven_Wuornos](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Parker_Haven_Wuornos/gifts).



> Immense love to Lex (CrownedCarl) for all the encouragement and support when I was ready to give up on this fic. Thank you for convincing me it was worth fighting through.
> 
> Hale (Parker_Haven_Wuornos) gave me the prompt "I thought you were dead" and this is what happened. I hope you enjoy!
> 
> *title is lyrics from the song "Waves" by The Dear Hunter

Duke doesn’t tell anyone he’s leaving.

He packs up three days’ worth of clothes and two bottles of bourbon and drives until the lines on the road start to wobble.

He just needs a little room to breathe, is all. Three days. That’s what he gives himself. After that, he’ll pony up and dive back into the chaos. And if the town manages to set fire to itself while he’s gone? Well, Nathan and Audrey always give him shit for getting involved, anyway. They can handle it.

He lands at another little seaside town a little way down south, checks himself into a cheap motel, and takes his liquor to the beach.

Duke didn’t tell anyone he was leaving because he doesn’t expect anyone to notice he’s gone. Nathan and Audrey only ever come knocking when they need something, and they seem to make it a point not to need anything.

The real pathetic part is that Duke’s dying to be proven wrong.

Sat in the sand right at the edge of the surf, Duke drinks straight from the bottle and waits for a phone call he’s never going to get. The more he drinks, the funnier it gets. Duke had the whole world at his fingertips, once: wasn’t beholden to anything or anyone or any half-rate, backwater town.

Now he’s gone and let himself turn into this needy, hopeful thing—clinging to Nathan’s coattails like a lost child, chasing behind Audrey like a stray dog.

Bad enough falling for one cop; he had to go and make it two.

What a mess.

Duke stumbles out a dizzy bubble of a laugh and covers his face with his hands. He drops back against the sand. It feels cool through the cotton of his shirt. Staring up at the stars, Duke almost forgets about the weight of his phone in his pocket. Almost.

If it weren’t for some stupid promise to a father who didn’t love him, he might not have ever come back to Haven at all. (Never mind the things he’d left behind, there. Never mind the fact that he still called it home even when it didn’t feel like one. Never mind the magnetic pull that tried to draw him back no matter how far across the globe he fled from it.)

He toasts the sky, shaking his head. “That’s what you get for listening to a dead man,” he announces to no one. To the stars, maybe, since they’re the place destinies are supposed to be written in.

Whoever wrote his destiny must have been drunk, too.

He’d have been better off staying gone. What would the Crocker curse have mattered, with no troubled people around to hurt? And if he’d never come back, that old love for Nathan would have stayed buried, halfway across the ocean, where Duke didn’t have to look at it. Then, he never would have met Audrey, at all. And you can’t miss what you never had.

That’s funny, too. He’s laughing. That’s what he’s doing. Laughing.

Duke wakes up with sand in his mouth and a crab scuttling up the leg of his jeans. (He only panics a little and there’s no one around to see it.)

After dusting the sand off of his back and his dignity, Duke retreats to the motel room—the one he paid for and never used—hungover and hungry.

He tries to get a few more hours sleep—in a bed this time—but he can’t shake the persistent nagging sensation in the back of his mind. It’s this infuriating _tug_ like he’s forgotten something. Like he’s left the stove on—except in this case the stove is the entire town of Haven, Maine.

Duke used to be the kind of person who could take a weekend away from anything: drop all emotional baggage at the door. This time, he spends the rest of the weekend in the most boring, atmosphereless bar he’s ever had the displeasure of patronizing and can’t seem to stop checking his phone.

Halfway through his non-vacation, Duke’s phone lights up with Nathan’s name. Despite the last thirty hours spent tipsy and wistful, when his phone finally does go off, Duke just stares at it. He watches it buzz once, twice, three times: scooting along the surface of the bedside table. Beside it, the alarm clock beams its red numbers into the dim of the room.

Six in the morning. Too early for a social call.

Duke feels a spike of disgust carve through him. It’s always something, with those two. They only ever want him when the sky is falling. And he can handle that. He can take it. He can be that, if that’s what he has to be.

But not until Monday.

Eventually, the call goes to voicemail and the buzzing stops.

When the screen lights up again with a text, Duke turns the thing off and buries it in the bottom of his duffel bag. No matter what his stupid heart wants, the mundane reality of it is that whatever’s in that message will only disappoint him.

He doesn’t touch his phone for the rest of the weekend.

Duke returns to Haven with his tail between his legs, decidedly untriumphant and unrelaxed. He listens to exactly one of the dozen messages Nathan left on his phone (and, knowing Nathan, he’d probably opted for at least three or four missed calls before he finally managed to grit out a voicemail).

Actually, he listens to the first fifteen seconds of the first message, which opens with an acerbic, “Oh, so you thought _now_ was a good time to disappear, huh?” and figures he’s probably got the gist. Something _Haven-y_ had happened, and Duke hadn’t been manning his post. The town disappointment strikes again.

One more stamp, and the next one’s free.

There are a few messages from Audrey, too, but Duke can’t bring himself to listen to any of those. It’s easy being mad at Nathan. It’s almost impossible to be angry with her.

And that’s part of the problem, isn’t it?

He needs a drink. One drink, and then he’ll go back to staring down the barrel of his destiny or whatever the hell else happens to be pointing a gun at him, this week.

He’s at the Gull—before open hours, alone with his thoughts and a bottle of whiskey—half a glass deep when Nathan bursts through the double doors, all hurricane and spitting fury.

Duke knew this was coming, he just expected it to take a little longer.

“Duke?!” Nathan barks, voice colored with disbelief.

Duke doesn’t look up at him. “Last time I checked,” he drawls back. He downs the rest of his whiskey in one go and pours himself another.

Still caught just inside the entryway, Nathan seems to rediscover the same outrage that had him storming through the doors. “I thought you were dead,” he spits, like some kind of accusation.

“Mazel tov,” Duke chimes, lifting his glass in toast. “Must have been a nice twenty minutes for you.”

He’s been bracing for this fight from the moment he turned off his phone. Nathan’s always had tunnel vision, like everything that isn’t immediate ceases to exist. Duke expects to be hit with the usual fair—unreliable, untrustworthy, good for nothing.

But Nathan doesn’t move, and he doesn’t throw insults, either. Not yet, anyway.

“Look at me!” He snarls, and Duke isn’t sure if he obeys out of surprise or out of instinct.

“I thought you were dead,” Nathan repeats, flustered with something that doesn’t quite read as fury; Duke doesn’t understand it.

He interrupts with a performative, “Yeah, you mentioned,” that doesn’t come off nearly as caustic as it’s meant to be.

“Shut up!” Nathan snaps. Finally, he crosses the distance between them. Nathan’s rage always runs hot. It boils and bubbles over. Duke’s own anger has never been like that. For Duke, rage is a cold and quiet thing. But Nathan—he charges up to Duke and snatches him by the collar. “I thought you were dead, and then I saw your goddamn car outside! So—what? You couldn’t be bothered to check your fucking phone?”

“Silly me,” Duke counters, with an icy, false levity that doesn’t reach his eyes, “Must have left it in my other pants.”

Nathan shoves him, hard, and sends him tumbling backwards off the stool. He lands on his ass on the wooden floor, the impact sudden enough to jar him sober.

“It’s not funny,” Nathan snarls down at him.

Flooded with a rush of (maybe not entirely earned) righteous anger, Duke scrambles to his feet, ready to give as good as he gets. “Oh, it’s hilarious,” he sneers in response. He shoves Nathan up against the bar. His body connects with a dull thud, but there’s no satisfaction to it. Not when Nathan can’t feel it—when he barely reacts.

Something desperate and awful claws up from the inside of Duke’s chest. “What’d you need from me this time, huh?” He demands.

The last time they had this conversation, Duke was on the other side of it.

Looking at Nathan now, he’s struck with a kind of vertigo. The memory breaks through his anger in flashes: the two of them on the deck of his ship, the contraband in the hold. Nathan’s furious expression. The thump of his palms against Duke’s chest when he pushed him backwards. The way Nathan’s voice broke when he barked, _You only brought me here so you could use me._

Maybe they’re destined to keep doing this. A tug of war where everyone loses.

Nathan levers himself away from the bar—pushes into Duke’s space. This close, Duke can’t tell if the look on Nathan’s face is a dare or a threat or a promise. A strange and ugly part of him wants all three.

If the world were fair, if it made any sense, Duke could blame the uptick in his heartbeat on adrenaline. But it’s Pavlovian. Nathan gets close to him and his whole system goes haywire.

For once, he doesn’t want to deescalate. He’s spent three days wallowing and he wants something rough and terrible to snap him out of it. He flashes Nathan a toothy, wide-eyed grin: purposefully smug just because he knows how much it gets under Nathan’s skin.

“You gonna hit me, Nate?” He dares, voice low. Cocking his head, he hums, “Funny way to act happy to see me.”

Nathan moves fast and sudden. Duke braces for an impact that never comes.

Instead, Nathan’s arms lock around his back and all at once he’s being crushed to Nathan’s chest.

“Quit picking fights, you asshole,” Nathan mumbles up against the crook of Duke’s neck. An undercurrent of desperation cuts through the leftover heat in his voice. He squeezes tighter, nearly pressing all the air out of Duke’s lungs. “Please, just shut the hell up.”

Duke feels like a couple pages in their little narrative have gotten stuck together—like he skipped over something important. Nathan doesn’t _give_ like this. Nathan pushes and pushes until one of them breaks. It’s been that way for years.

“Uh, what did I miss?” Duke asks, voice pinched. His hands hover a few inches away from Nathan’s back. A thread of confused humor sneaks into his tone when he jokes, “We _were_ fighting, right? ‘Cause I could have sworn we were fighting.”

In spite of himself, his hands finally settle at the small of Nathan’s back. It shouldn’t matter so much. Nathan can’t feel them anyway. But he returns the hug and he swears Nathan sighs a breath of relief for it.

Duke pats Nathan’s back a little awkwardly—an audio cue for Nathan that he can let go now, but Nathan doesn’t. He buries his face in Duke’s neck, and if Duke didn’t know better, he’d swear Nathan was _smelling_ him. It’s somewhere between uncomfortable and strangely endearing. Not that Duke would admit to that.

It clicks, finally, just how big this must have been to leave Nathan shaken this way.

“What happened, Nate?” Duke asks softly.

Nathan shakes his head. He’s quiet for a moment, only holding Duke tighter. “Explosion trouble, by the docks. The Rouge—”

A flood of panic rushes through him. “Hang on,” he interrupts, hands on Nathan’s waist to ease him back far enough to look at him. “What happened to my boat?”

Nathan seems irritated by the question. He shifts like he might pull away entirely but seems to reconsider it. Like this—the both of them caught just inside the circle of the other’s arms—they’ve somehow rediscovered a kind of easy intimacy that hasn’t _been_ easy for them in years. Duke tries not to get too attached to it. He really does. But he’d be lying if he said he wasn’t hyperaware of the warmth of Nathan’s hands.

“Your boat’s fine,” Nathan says, only to quickly correct himself to a less optimistic, “Well—it’s still above water. But the deck was—Duke, we thought you were on it.”

Guilt drops through Duke like a stone. He thinks of his phone, buried at the bottom of his bag for days while Nathan and Audrey’s calls kept going to voicemail. He can’t quite meet Nathan’s eyes, all of a sudden. “Oh,” he murmurs.

Finally, Nathan steps back. But he doesn’t go far. “Why the hell didn’t you answer your phone?”

Duke squares his shoulders, puffing out a sigh when he confesses, “Thought you were just—looking for someone to do your dirty work.”

He waits for the second eruption: waits for Nathan to ball up, get angry, tell him off. The silence drags on for what feels like an eternity. When he finally musters up the courage to look Nathan in the eye, he’s baffled by the expression staring back at him.

“Been almost two days,” Nathan murmurs, skirting around the subject in the way he always does. But it’s different than usual. He avoids one moment of honesty, but steers straight into a different one. Nathan’s voice fractures in a funny little way; it’s not something Duke’s used to hearing from him. “Thought you were gone for two days.”

“So, how many parties did you throw?” Duke jokes weakly. He knows it’s tone-deaf. He knows Nathan is trying to open up. But he doesn’t know what to _do_ with that.

“Shut up,” Nathan mumbles, more breath than voice. The comment comes out less biting and more desperate, flustered. Like he’s trying to make Duke understand something important. “It—it _hurt_.” Nathan’s hand lifts to rub his chest; it’s an instinctual, thoughtless motion—one that Duke assumes must, at this point, be driven more by the soft sound of his hand against the fabric than of the non-feeling of his palm against his collar.

With the anger finally giving way, Nathan looks exhausted. Duke’s suddenly conscious of how pale he looks, the sleepless redness to his eyes. The reality of everything finally starts to slot into place, for Duke. It’s a gift and a curse.

“Nate, I didn’t know that it would—” He fumbles for words, feeling in over his head and electric with something he doesn’t dare call hope. “Didn’t think anybody was gonna miss me.” He means to deliver the last part as a joke—something casual and breezy and unimportant. It doesn’t quite land.

Nathan moves with purpose. He steps in close, watching his hands land on either side of Duke’s jaw. Duke’s heart still remembers that kind of touch, from Nathan, even when his body’s forgotten.

A wave of goosebumps rolls up his arms, prickling across his skin. He mumbles Nathan’s name, but he’s interrupted by a whispered, “Shut up,” before Nathan’s mouth bumps against his. “I missed you.”

Nathan’s hands push into Duke’s hair, one at the nape of his neck. He grips too tight, pulls too hard. It’s clumsy and needy and, in the sudden mess of it, Nathan manages to bite down on Duke’s tongue in a decidedly unsexy way. Duke moans anyway. It doesn’t matter that it’s messy. It’s Nathan.

Nathan breaks the kiss first, leaving Duke feeling starstruck and unfocused. When he finally manages to scrape a sentence together, the first thing out of his mouth is a brainless, “Not to, uh, sound ungrateful but—why kiss me if you can’t even feel it?”

Rolling his eyes, Nathan pins him with an exasperated expression. “You can feel it.”

Duke can’t resist the impulse to kiss the frown off Nathan’s face. He presses forward, shivering when Nathan’s hands fall to his waist and drag him closer. “You’re not good at this,” he teases up against Nathan’s mouth.

He feels the smile—hears it, in Nathan’s voice—more than he sees it, with Nathan so close. “Oh yeah?” Nathan tips closer, bumping their noses together in a way Duke is pretty sure is on purpose. “You try kissing what you can’t feel. See how smooth _you_ are.”

“I’m just saying,” Duke laughs, his voice low and warm. He cradles Nathan’s face in his hands, guiding him to the right angle. “A little technique wouldn’t kill you.”

Duke only gives him a hard time to goad Nathan into kissing him more just to prove him wrong. It works. Nathan’s hands slide up his back and he sighs against Duke’s mouth.

They’re interrupted by the front door banging open.

“Duke, if you aren’t dead, I am gonna _kill_ you—oh.”

They don’t quite have time to scrabble apart before Audrey storms inside. They’re stuck like deer in headlights, looking like guilty teenagers.

Audrey only hesitates for a fraction of a second.

“What the fuck, Nathan?” She explodes. “You couldn’t have texted me?!” She charges forward with so much fury and momentum, Duke half expects to be slapped.

She throws her arms around his neck, instead.

“Make out with him _after_ you tell me he’s okay, you dick,” she grouses at Nathan over Duke’s shoulder. Nathan doesn’t say anything, but he must be going red because she grumbles an only-slightly-amused, “Yeah, you should be embarrassed.”

All at once she pulls back, pinning Duke with a sharp look. “And you! What the fuck! Where was your phone?”

“In his other pants,” Nathan mumbles, sheepishly echoing Duke’s joke from earlier.

Audrey shoots him an unamused look. “Oh, you checked, did you?” She needles dryly.

“ _No_ ,” Nathan sputters. If he wasn’t red before, he is now.

Duke rescues Nathan from Audrey’s ire with a genuine, if not somewhat cowed, “I’m sorry.”

Refocusing her attention on him, Audrey puffs out an agitated sigh. She runs her hands over his shoulders, as if to prove he’s really real, really there. She straightens his shirt; it feels a little bit like an excuse not to look in him the eyes. “You scared us.”

“Didn’t think you’d notice, honestly.” Duke doesn’t actually mean to say it out loud. Once it’s out—once he sees the stricken expression on her face—he feels a surge of regret hit sharp and sudden, like the feeling of sucking on a lemon.

“ _Duke_ ,” Audrey urges, her small hands lifting to cradle his face. All at once, he feels like he can’t breathe. Can’t look away. He meets her gaze with a shocked, uncertain expression. But she’s steady. Steady and present and gentle. She drags her thumb along the crest of his cheek and his heart tries to rabbit out from behind his ribs.

She’s silent for a moment, brows knitted together in thought. Finally, she sighs a quiet, “That’s our fault, huh?”

In his periphery, Duke sees Nathan nod and glance down at the ground. If Duke didn’t know better, he’d say it was in shame.

Duke is nowhere near prepared for this kind of conversation. He averts his eyes, suddenly desperate to be anywhere else. “Forget it,” Duke laughs with a forced ease. He feels helplessly transparent in a way he isn’t used to. “Forget I said anything.” He tries to turn his head, but she holds him steady in her hands.

“No,” she says, kind but unyielding. “We’re gonna do better, alright?”

Off to one side, Nathan looks just as uncomfortable as Duke feels. It’s not a bad feeling—not entirely. But he finds himself self-conscious and _shy_. A little speechless. Duke doesn’t know what to do if not talk.

“Okay,” he agrees softly, unsure of what else to say.

Still cradling his face, she promises, “You’re a part of this. You’re a part of us.”

“She’s right,” Nathan offers, embarrassed and awkward, but honest. At least, he sounds honest. And Duke wants to believe it. He wants to more than anything.

Audrey’s smile breaks the tension. She looks over to Nathan. “You already kissed him, right?” She asks, warm and a little teasing.

A look of shock crosses Nathan’s face, followed close behind by something bashful and pleased. “Uh—I—yeah,” he mumbles, shooting a muted smile down at his feet.

“Good,” Audrey chimes, and Duke feels a shiver run up his back. “Then it’s my turn.”

She tips her head to look up at him and Duke swallows around the sudden tightness in his throat. Being the center of her attention feels almost unbearable. Like he’s burning up.

“Quick question,” Duke jokes, because that’s something he knows how to do—that’s something he can feel in control of. He can’t hide the smile that sneaks onto his face when he asks, “Am I dreaming?”

Audrey matches his grin with one of her own. “You dream about this often?” She teases, and Duke swears his knees go weak—like every stupid fairytale romance story he’s ever heard.

“Only when I’m lucky,” he mumbles, wishing he weren’t so glaringly obvious when his gaze drops to her mouth.

She lifts up onto her toes and his heart does a somersault. He dips to meet her, sighing softly against her mouth when her arms wind around his neck. Not so distantly, Duke’s aware that Nathan’s watching. Or maybe pointedly _not_ watching. He can’t resist the urge to peek one eye open. He catches a glimpse of Nathan bouncing on the balls of his feet, glancing away when he spots Duke looking.

Duke smiles into the kiss.

He’s never put much thought into Maine’s biting cold; he grew up here. He’s used to it. But in this moment, he feels warmer than he has in years. Warmer than he did on the beaches of the Caribbean. Warmer than off the coast of Spain. His hands settle on her waist and arches into him. When the kiss ends, Duke finds himself dizzy and dazed, heart so full it feels like it’s trying to balloon out of his chest.

When he finally stutters his way to words, he manages a babbling, “So, are these just, uh, ‘I’m glad you’re not dead’ kisses, or—? Like, how awkward is this gonna be, tomorrow?”

“Pretty awkward,” Nathan mumbles, but he’s smiling—casting the both of them a sheepish look, arms crossed over his chest.

“Ignore him,” Audrey puffs, amused in spite of herself.

“I usually do,” Duke jokes, and only beam brighter when Nathan makes a face at him.

“If only,” Nathan drawls in mock irritation as he gravitates closer to the two of them.

Duke reaches for him without thinking. Their hands brush. Nathan glances at the point of contact, only hesitating a moment before making the decision to link their fingers together.

Pinned between the two of them, now, Duke feels a little overwhelmed. He casts a bashful chuckle at his feet, mumbling, “Not to be a buzzkill, but—y’know, this is, uh… probably something we should talk about.”

“And I do wanna talk about it,” Audrey promises, resting her hands on his chest. His heart hammers underneath the touch. “But right now, I’m just—really, really happy you’re here.” She smiles, so soft and bright it aches to look at it. “And I really wanna take my boys to dinner.”

My boys.

Duke watches Nathan bite down on the same shy smile he feels mirrored on his own face. Nathan can’t feel it, but Duke squeezes his hand anyway.

“Okay, but you’re buyin’,” Duke teases—despite the fact that he has every intention to slip the waiter his credit card before anyone even orders. But he’ll keep that part to himself, for now.

“Deal,” she chimes.

She loops her arm around his waist, and he’s a little stunned by how perfectly she fits underneath his arm. Like she was always meant to be there: the same way Nathan’s hand seems to fit perfectly in his.

Nathan falls into step beside them as they head for the door. One arm around Audrey’s shoulder, the other hand-in-hand with Nathan, Duke comes to an abrupt stop.

“Okay, but seriously,” he urges, looking back and forth between them. “What the hell happened to my boat?”


End file.
